[OSM-talk] RR8 - Possible International Vandal

[Peter Miller]

On 2 Sep 2009, at 14:54, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote:

> On Wed, Sep 2, 2009 at 1:27 PM, Lester Caine<lester at lsces.co.uk>  
> wrote:
>> Bjarki Sigursveinsson wrote:
>>> I can confirm that the changes this user has made in Iceland are
>>> completely disruptive and illogical. The user has gone all around  
>>> the
>>> country and either promoted or demoted roads in a seemingly random  
>>> way
>>> without any regard to the established conventions of the Icelandic
>>> mapping community. I have tried communiating with this user but  
>>> there
>>> have been no responses. The damage that has been done is way too
>>> widespread to be reverted manually.
>>
>> It does sound as if it has reached the point where NONE of his  
>> edits can
>> be shown to be beneficial. So perhaps it is time simply to revert  
>> them
>> all? Especially if he is unwilling to defend his actions?
>
> I haven't looked through /all/ of his edits for Iceland. Currently he
> has 880 ways and 306 nodes to his name (user=RR8 in the XML) and I
> haven't gone through all his edits. But what I've looked at has been
> 100% harmful.
>
> He's re-classified highways in a manner that's inconsistent, arbitrary
> and completely ignores our previously established conventions[1].
> Including marking some things that were highway=primary before as
> highway=trunk and introducing highway=motorway in Iceland (which has
> no motorways).
>
> 1. http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Is:Map_Features#Highway

I think we are needing to agree the protocol on the wiki for  
responding the vandalism. I have updated the response section of the   
vandalism page. Please do edit away until on the page and discuss the  
issues here until it is right. [1]

I suggest that where we find someone who has performed a significant  
number of edits which appear to be gratiffi (be it mindless,  
malicious, or whatever) and possibly many others that are of no clear  
benefit and none or very few that on casual inspection of a sample of  
edits are well researched then we should normally message them and if  
we don't get a response within 24-48 hours we revert them. If the  
edits are of a high-profile nature (such as these) we revert first and  
then message. We also add reverts to an appropriate wiki page to say  
what we have done.

We need a tool that will revert even if further edits have been made  
on top, and to highlight any ways that require manual attention  
because the reversion is too complex. We also need a tool to revert  
the revert in case the reversion was in itself vandalism or ill- 
thought out.

Fyi, we still need this tool to respond for Liam123 who still has many  
many current edits in the Essex/Kent areas (and also possibly some  
still in Germany and Spain which he also fiddled with).

None of this needs the permission of the Foundation, we are quite able  
to do this ourselves in the usual way and as Michael Collinson  
suggested at the AGM the Foundation should only be there to do the  
things that the community is not able to do (ie Finance and Legal).


[1] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Vandalism

Regards,


Peter


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